


lay down your dying breath, too heavy to rise

by fensandmarshes



Category: Dream SMP (Video Blogging RPF)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dead TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Dead Wilbur Soot, Dream Team SMP Angst (Video Blogging RPF), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt/Comfort, Injured TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Older Sibling Wilbur Soot, Protective Wilbur Soot, Scared TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Spoilers for DSMP as of March 1, Traumatized Tommyinnit (Video Blogging RPF), WHY IS EVERYONE COMMENTING ON THIS ABOUT FLUFF. WHAT DID I DO WRONG., Whump, no beta we die like t-, oh this is gonna be a fun sequence of tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:02:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29820510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fensandmarshes/pseuds/fensandmarshes
Summary: In the end he goes quick.Small mercies, Tommy would probably say, if it weren’t for the fact that there was nothing of mercy in the way that he hurtled into death, from ten hearts to one in the space of a few sentences, talking all the way until the final punch to his gut that brought the last rib shattering out of place, puncturing a few too many organs if he’s honest with himself. He goes quick into death, talking all the while; he goes like he lived.Tommy meets Wilbur, in the moments after his death. This time, he gets to stay.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 72
Kudos: 332





	lay down your dying breath, too heavy to rise

**Author's Note:**

> \- dsmp characters, not irl ccs  
> \- all platonic  
> \- i feel like there was stuff i should have said in here but i cant think of it so im just gonna go to bed

In the end he goes quick.

Small mercies, Tommy would probably say, if it weren’t for the fact that there was nothing of mercy in the way that he hurtled into death, from ten hearts to one in the space of a few sentences, talking all the way until the final punch to his gut that brought the last rib shattering out of place, puncturing a few too many organs if he’s honest with himself. He goes quick into death, talking all the while; he goes like he lived.

Tommy blinks and then the pain’s stopped; his words die on his tongue halfway through his sentence, because this is darkness, this is a silence that swallows everything, this is a stopping-place and a halfway point and fuck, fucking shit, wait, what the fuck just - did Dream just actually - it hits him like another punch and he stumbles to the ground that isn’t there, _he fucking died,_ and somehow he manages a laugh that rattles through wheezy lungs and ribs he didn’t realise are still broken because there’s no pain or consciousness of his body. Tommy is dead - fucking crabrave. He’s on his hands and knees, pathetic, coughing up laughter and blood, and his chest feels like it’s rearranging itself or being born again. Ironic that. He’s never felt smaller or angrier or less worthy of his anger.

He gives another hacking cough, realises it’s become a sob somewhere along the line. His eyes are dry, but anguish gathers in his throat like fucking hairballs. He really didn’t mean to kill the cat, honest.

He’s fucking _dead._

The darkness is shifting around him again and it’s like someone is pulling a rug out from under his feet, saying _ha, bitch boy, though you were all steady, where’s your balance now_ \- he cries out again, wordless, and it tears its way out of him like all the things he never said because he was too busy saying everything else that he never really meant. Fierce, furious, a plea for help. It echoes and doesn’t, a sound out of place in the quiet that is less the absence of sound and more something swallowing any noise Tommy dares to make, crushing his protests with an apathetic heel; is he the fucking bug in this analogy? Like that book Techno made him read when he was ten. Metamorphosis, or something. Turned into a great big beetle. 

The solidness drops away. There’s nothing under him and he thinks he’s falling but it’s hard to tell - there’s no noise as his scream is ripped from him - something like a hand at his throat and another over his face and he can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t claw them away because there’s more hands grasping at his wrists and dragging him down, down, could be left or right, he can’t fucking see the difference in this pitch black that wants to swallow him, make him silent - more hands pressing into his scars, the arrow through his chest, the mark over his chest from the final control room, and hands all over his ribs, his chest, his lungs. He can’t fucking breathe -

It wants him to shut up.

Tommy’s had enough of people telling him to be quiet.

He’s still falling but he sucks in a breath and the hands are gone and, at the top of his lungs, collapsing, like all of him, he shrieks as loud a “FUCK YOU, BITCH” as his dying breath can muster. True Tommy Innit style - if he goes he’s gonna scream at the universe as he does it, and it’s gonna be profane, and no one is going to shut him up, not now, not _ever._

It’s like the world says _alright, then,_ and there’s a sigh that Tommy’s heard before, the one that says _fucking hell, you’re the worst one I’ve seen yet,_ and then the darkness takes his brain too, but only for a moment - just like going to sleep -

(The universe doesn’t say _I love you,_ but it does the next best thing. It gives Tommy someone to do it for them.)

“Fuck,” is the first thing Tommy hears, which is honestly pretty in-keeping with his expectations for death so far. Or so he tells himself. Like his throat didn’t close up at the voice. It’s second nature at this point to remind himself _it’s not him, it can’t be, I’m imagining things, remember the one (1) therapy session it’s fucking good for you,_ because he’s used to hearing this voice in quiet moments and conspicuous gaps in conversation and all the places where there used to be a laugh he knew as well as his own, in spaces that used to be filled by words that prided themselves on their own eloquence. He’s used to it being something he makes up, cause he’s just that desperate and clingy like he lies himself out of being. He’s such a loser if he thinks about it. El-em-ay-oh. L. Tommy comes to in bits and pieces, and the habit floods back first: remind yourself he’s dead. Remind yourself you’re making it up. Remind yourself that Wilbur Soot is not here, because he is lost to you, and no matter how raw your voice is in the morning after you spend all night screaming at the heavens to give him back, there is nothing you can do. It’s a skill that came with practice.

Then he’s gasping in air and realising he doesn’t need to and breath feels superfluous in his chest, alien and unnecessary, and there’s a hand resting on the small of his back - “Breathe, just breathe, it makes it easier, you don’t have to, but come on, Tommy, just breathe with me -” and following this voice’s instructions is as easy as breathing, and Tommy breathes, hears it rattle in his lungs and imagines the way his ribs caved in, and then it hits him. Punches the air straight back out of him with the force of his panic.

He rolls over onto his back, coughing, spluttering, eyes bugged out wide, and his chest goes painfully tight.

He’s _dead._ And that means -

The crying comes before he even processes it, like his tears know better than him - he’s always fucking hated crying, the way it made him small and useless and muddled up his face all red and snotty like a kid. He wasn’t a kid. He’s not a kid. He’s - a kid, here, now, in some dark empty place, but only because there’s a man kneeling at his side with shattered eyes and a hand on his back and another hovering, poised, as though afraid to touch, as though Tommy will shatter too, as though he’s scared his own touch is poison - 

“Wilbur,” Tommy says, and only then does he realise he’s crying because of the way it comes out, all choked and broken, and he can still feel the blind panic of his death, a thousand blows landing in the vulnerable places of his jaw and neck and ribcage, the way he suffocated in his own body and in that tight tight cell with no room to breathe. Wilbur sweeps him up, holds him close, hesitance gone - only now, in the contrast of their two shadowy forms, does Tommy notice he’s shaking. Like a leaf or something. Insignificant. Wilbur clutches Tommy to his chest like he’s terrified Tommy will break or vanish or pull away, a dropped glass, smoke on the wind, a soldier learning better.

Tommy doesn’t pull away, feels himself shivering, and Wilbur says, in his ear, “You weren’t supposed to _come here,”_ and the voice is low and real and Tommy’s heard it so many times, convinced himself it’s never true, he had to, to keep going -

“Sorry,” he whispers, meek, and ducks his head. “I tried not to.”

“Don’t you fucking dare be sorry.”

“I tried, Wilbur, I really did, I told him to stop -”

“Don’t you fucking _dare,_ ” Wilbur repeats, and his voice is fury, dark and threaded through with the terrors of Tartarus, a man casting his curses. Tommy knows the tone well. He can feel Wilbur’s hands tighten in the back of his shirt, and he doesn’t know, now, if the shaking is panic or a wiser fear, the kind that parents use cautionary tales to instil in their children - well-earned fear, of a ghost who carries the bogeyman in his shadow.

“You’re not angry at me, right,” Tommy says, pathetic and quiet, and can hear his own crying in his voice. Like a fucking baby. “Right? Wil?”

“Of course not.” Wilbur takes a long deep breath and Tommy can feel it in his own chest, the way they’re pressed together; then he’s pulling away, and Tommy stifles a whimper at it. He’s acting like a kid. The hand stays on Tommy’s shoulder, like Wilbur’s terrified too, scared of letting go. “God. You’re - you’re _here.”_

“In the flesh,” Tommy tries to joke, and then swallows away another coughing sob when it occurs to him that this _isn’t_ in the flesh, that he’s for real dead, that this is more than just the respawn void, that he’s all out of chances - his breath comes in heaving gasps and he _doesn’t need it,_ could get on just as well without it - what’s he gonna do, die of suffocation? - 

“Tommy. Tommy!”

“Don’t fucking - that’s the name,” Tommy agrees, pitchy, “wearing it out, are you - shut the fuck up -”

“You just never shut up, do you,” Wilbur marvels. And if Tommy listens, he can hear the softness there - the raw hurting fondness, the way his love eats itself - but he doesn’t, can’t, listen, can only think _even when I’m dying I don’t shut up, even when I’m_ dead, _that’s what he said, it’s what I am, TommyInnit, loud, annoying, deserved everything he got -_

“That I don’t, big man,” Tommy rasps, his throat dry from screaming. “Why, you gonna beat me to death for it?”

“I’m gonna beat _someone_ to death,” Wilbur mutters darkly, and fear thrills in Tommy’s chest but he knows, fiercely, that the fury is not directed at him. It’s intoxicating to know Wilbur is on his side. It shakes him to the bone, knowing his brother will fight for him again.

Or would. If they weren’t -

“Holy shit,” Tommy says, and it comes out relatively normal. He scrambles to his feet, and Wilbur rises with him, standing with predatory grace - they’re in some kind of void, darkspace, like a big fat hole underneath the universe - his hands, when he holds them up, are translucent. Wilbur’s chest, when Tommy can bear to look at it, is marred by two neat sword wounds that vomit red onto the fabric around them. He lifts a hand to his cheek and it comes back sticky. “Holy shit, we’re _dead,_ I - I don’t know if you _noticed_ -”

“Yeah, no, somehow I had that much figured out,” Wilbur says, and Tommy looks over again, and his chest hurts because Wilbur is not alive but his eyes are bright and he is real, present, somehow, _here,_ and Tommy has spent so long insisting to his stupid, stupid brain that he was never gonna see Wilbur again - before he can think better of it, before he can remember how feral and broken Wilbur went towards the end there, he hurtles towards his brother and hides a choked sob in the lapels of his coat. It smells the same. Blood and gunpowder and too-sharp incense, a wild creature incarnate - and yet Wilbur tugs Tommy closer to his chest, tentative at first, then with a vehemence that terrifies them both.

There is no heartbeat. But Tommy can feel Wilbur’s hands on his shoulderblades, and that’s good enough for him.

Dimly he is aware that he is crying. Again.

But Wilbur is speaking, low and soothing; it takes all the willpower Tommy has but he manages to wrench his focus back into the present, force his brain into processing the words. “- let it out,” Wilbur is saying, “fuck, you know I sobbed for a week solid when I first got here and there was just _more,_ it wasn’t even over - you’ll see, though, Toms, it fades, after a bit.” Wilbur seems very pleased by this. “You can let yourself fade. Most of the way. It’s like resting, really, doesn’t hurt a bit.”

Tommy clears his throat. “You’re still here, though.”

“Cause you can wake yourself up again, can’t you,” Wilbur says, and pats his back, like Tommy has the faintest memories of some parent doing when he was very young, shaking the burps out of him like bubbles, the gentle impacts grounding. “Mind you, it’s very dull. Sitting in this void. Schlatt shows up sometimes, but mostly he just drifts.”

Tommy says, hating how quiet his voice is, “Stick around a bit. Please.” He fights away the brokenness and forges on, determined: “I know it’s. A lot to ask, I’m sorry, I know you just want to rest, but I’m - I’m _scared_ -”

“Of course.”

The abrupt certainty is jarring. Tommy doesn’t look up at Wilbur, but he - goes still. Pauses. “Of course? Just like that?”

“Well obviously,” Wilbur says, and gives Tommy more of those steady gentle pats on the back; Tommy lets himself relax a little, and this is all so impossibly familiar and part of his brain is still screaming _this isn’t real you’re wishing again_ but if this is all fake then so be it, Tommy’s allowed some good old hallucinations by now, surely. “You need me. This time I’m lucid enough to be there -” Wilbur’s tone darkens, almost imperceptibly - “I am _going to be._ ”

“Oh,” Tommy says, quiet - someone’s finally shut him up, then - and goes just a bit limp. Wilbur clutches him tighter, doesn’t let him fall. “Will, Wilbur, I - d’you know what happened?”

“I know enough.”

“Aw, fuck,” Tommy says, not sure quite what he’s talking about at this point but probably it’s warranted. Wilbur chuckles, and it’s a sound that Tommy has been thinking he hears, wishing to hear, for what seems like lifetimes. 

They manoevre: Wilbur shuffles backwards, further, further, and then there’s some awkward limb-wrangling until Tommy’s sprawled on his back in the hard flat void with his head in Wilbur’s lap, clingy, fucking hell, getting his hair all carded through and shit. Tommy can feel exhaustion tugging at the edges of his eyelids, dragging his hands into the darkness, but he tells it to fuck off. Just for now. Just for a little bit. Although he’s so fucking tired. “Wilbur,” he says, and it’s getting darker, but his brother’s eyes gleam in the shadows.

“Here I am,” Wilbur says, his voice a compromise between soft and steely. “Always.”

“Wilbur, we’re _dead._ ”

“That’s true.”

“This is kinda bullshit, then.”

“The afterlife’s a sham. Call up the universe.”

“I told it to fuck off, I think. On my way here.”

“Ha,” Wilbur says, and his teeth are bone-white as he grins. “I did the same thing. I was very angry about the whole _being conscious_ thing, when I first died.”

“I was scared,” Tommy whispers, and it echoes. He wants to soften it with harsh loud jokes, but - can’t. Can’t bring himself to. He is so very tired, to his bones. Always running around and shouting, isn’t he, and it takes death to finally make him shut up.

“I know, Toms,” Wilbur murmurs. His hand in Tommy’s hair is soothing, moving idly from time to time. “I could hear it.”

“You could hear -?”

“When you got closer to dying. It got louder and louder.”

“Oh,” Tommy says, and forces a laugh that comes out like a choked splutter. “That’s fucking embarrassing.” It’s hard to breathe; the laugh has sucked the last of the fight out of him, at least for now, but. Maybe if he - rests. It’ll come back?

“You just go to sleep, Tommy,” Wilbur suggests, low and gentle. “I’ll be around when you wake up.”

Tommy could fight for breath. But he’s done with fighting, has had three lifetimes of it; he is so fucking tired.

“There you are,” Wilbur hushes, and Tommy lets his breath go, and closes his eyes, and lets himself drift.

The rest is quiet.

It’s good to know he doesn’t have to fight any more.

**Author's Note:**

> please leave me a comment if you enjoyed!! it really, really makes my day 🥺
> 
> and listen i have plans to do a crack fic on this exact same concept, if your heart needs a lil healing ngjshgd. also feel free to ask for fluffy fic recs in the comments and i will do my best to provide!!


End file.
